Save Me!!

So, I got bored on the internet again ( a very dangerous thing to do, kids ) and started reading around. I realized I didn’t really know a lot about what people learn in church, besides God and Jesus. So I read a little from some church websites about what they believe and I read about salvation.

Basically, you don’t have to do anything to be saved. God just has to love you. Aparently God loves you because Jesus was born and then died. I figured that since EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD was born and then dies, God must love us a whole flippin’ lot. Anyways, it never really says what God is saving you from, so I assumed that they’re leaving it up to the imagination. How generous!

So let’s stretch our imagination muscles for a moment. Let’s imagine that God loves us. God loves us so much that he says “Yo, I love you soooo much, dawg. In fact, homie, I love you so much, that you can choose 5 things, and I’ll save you from them.” (I’m trying to modernize this for all you young folk…)

You slap him a high-five and yell “Score!” and then you proceed to list the 5 things you want to be totally and absolutely safe from. What 5 things do you choose to be saved from?

My picks are:

(If we’re still pretending): 1. Bad hair days 2. Annoying people 3. Listening to bad music 4. Being hit by meteor from outer space! 5. Homework

(If this happened FOR REALZ): 1. Sickness (yes I just knocked out all sicknesses, including but not limited to: the common cold, flu, cancer, alzheimer’s, rabies, cooties, etc…) 2. War 3. Bullets (or is that included in war?) 4. Suffocating/Drowning 5. Homework.

I used to dearly love using my imagination. In fact, I was such a serial daydreamer that it’s a wonder I absorbed anything from church, sunday school, vacation bible school, youth group meetings, bible studies and confirmation classes. Sadly, age and law school have beaten most of that out of me.

So, on your real list you wouldn’t want protection from the space meteor? Foolhardy young whippersnapper.

Also, you’re right, they never do mention what you are saved from. To a certain extent, you already have to be at least a cultural Christian for their efforts to work. You also managed to nail youth ministries super lame attempts at relating to “the youth of today”, for real real.

I was thinking of choosing to be saved from unhappiness, thereby cunningly knocking out sickness, poverty, war, etc. in one fell swoop. But then it occurred to me that a bit of unhappiness might be character-building or something, so…

Mornings, my brother’s singing, being spoilered on the net, exams where you have to write essays, and episodes of sci fi shows where previously rational characters realise that ‘maybe there’s something to X spiritual phenomenon after all.’

Ugh, I really wish I could be saved from homework. I mean really, 3 AP classes are killers (I actually have four, but for me, Biology is so easy I don’t count it). Especially outlines, they take so long… So boring… Then the other things include candy/sweet cravings, forgetting stuff (I am probably the most forgetful teenager ever), sleep deprivation (directly correlated with homework), and college expenses that will occur in the future.

1. My calculus final exam tomorrow. 2. The American public school system. 3. Apathetic people. 4. My AP World History textbook (the most tedious thing ever). 5. General conflicts between people (including world wars and Internet Drama).

Well, to borrow a little from Buddhism, I’d say Dukha, which is often described as “suffering” (as in “life is suffering”), but I had described to me a much more complicated thing. It includes suffering, but also what makes life feel like “a wheel off-kilter”. I wish I could explain it in fewer words, but I think you probably get the idea. Misery, suffering, all that.

If death and sickness doesn’t cause suffering or misery for you, then it’s not something to be feared, so freedom from all that is all you really need. Of course, being not free of all that right now, here’s a different list:

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